re: China: Balloon over US skies is for research the wind pushed it & it accidentally strayed

are we to assume you were incarcerated during the Trump presidency then?

do y’all get tv privileges in the clink? do they still call it the clink?

I remember watching a documentary from wwii. Japan used weather balloons to enter the jet stream and times to drop a bomb when it hit the US.

Sounds like China is basically doing the same

China has plenty of spy satellites orbiting the earth. They don't need to send a balloon off floating at random. It was a weather balloon that blew off course. Weather balloons are put up multiple times a day all over the world to collect data.

quote:

---

I remember watching a documentary from wwii. Japan used weather balloons to enter the jet stream and times to drop a bomb when it hit the US.

Sounds like China is basically doing the same

---

I am pretty sure that can be calculated with today's technology without actually testing it. Also, they could remote drop the bomb today. No need for a timed drop.

No one is dropping bombs with a weather balloon with todays technology except maybe North Korea

quote:

---

Why has some American not taken in out themselves yet?

---

Because it is above even flight paths which are 30K feet. A 30-06 isn't quite going to do it

quote:

---

The Pentagon decided not to shoot down the balloon, which was potentially flying over sensitive sites, because of concerns of hurting people on the ground.

---

Clown arse fricking federal government. Clown arse fricking military. Clown arse fricking country.

quote:

---

so, shooting it down shouldn't be a big deal.

---

This!

quote:

---

China has one of the most powerful geosynchronous spy satellites in space named Gaofen 4 and launched like 100 spy satellites in the past 3 or 4 years. They also have 5 other geosynchronous satellites in the Gaofen family.

---

Geosynchronous satellites are not low orbit satellites, so you will never get close to the same quality of pictures or sigint as you do with low orbit satellites. This is why spy planes, and apparently spy barroons, exist. In summary, Geosynchronous aren’t the best quality and low orbit don’t stay on station long and everyone knows when they will pass overhead, so spy planes and balloons can fill in the gaps.

They're technologically still subpar compared to us, and I could actually buy this story's angle.... *edit* it's a spy balloon.

quote:

---

I said yesterday that I don't see what this balloon could do that a high tech satellite couldn't

---

That's not the point. They are probing and seeing what exactly they can get away with everywhere. The objective is to normalize intrusions into spaces they never went into before.

And guess what, we are just letting them because we have no back bone in our leaders.

So they will go further and further and further. They literally flew a balloon with no velocity straight to our nuclear silos, and we didn't do anything.

They should have shot that thing out of the sky as soon as they saw it. Then investigate later. Oh its Chinese? Oops. Now there is precedent. The cameras might not even work on the balloon but it's still a massive victory for china.